Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Stanley Solomons

To Education Select Committee: I have been a governor for several years at St.Thomas primary school, Huddersfield which until three years ago comprised two schools, Bradley infant and nursery and Bradley junior which were merged.

Instead of considering paid governors, legislation should be brought in requiring mandatory training for new governors, not the present please yourself system. Regarding the makeup of governing bodies I am not too happy that headteachers are or can be members of the governing body. In our case it has caused no problems but situations could arise which might prohibit criticism of a Head if he or she were at the governors meeting.

Likewise I doubt the wisdom of having teacher governors for the same reason as above, ie could prohibit discussion about quality of teaching. Again, that has not proved a problem in my school which I feel is making good progress, but it could arise.

To clarify my earlier email re teacher governors. In fact governing bodies have staff governors elected by the staff and could be any members of staff.

In some or many cases they could be teachers including Heads and Assistant Heads.

June 2013